1st year anniversary aleHOUSE WHITE & HOUSE RED

Council Brewing has just turned One Years old. We're so excited that we made it to the one year mark, we decided to release not one, but two Anniversary beers in bottles. These 1st Anniversary Beers, which are our fifth/sixth barrel aged beer bottle release, are our House Red and House White. These beers blur the lines between beer and wine, spending nearly a year in the barrels, fermented with wine yeast, soured, and aged on grape must. Additional details on the beer are described below.

The bottle counts are very low on these beers at just 310 each. These were released in a set of both beers and the set limit was (1) per person due to the low counts. The House Red is 11.7% ABV and the House Red is 11.2% ABV.

THE BEER:

We love to color outside the lines when it comes to brewing beer and for our anniversary ale, we pushed the typical flavor boundaries to blur the space between wine and beer.

For the House Red, we start with dark crystal malts to give a foundation of dark fruit flavors and for the House White, all pale malts act as a blank canvas. An expressive wine yeast that contributes a brilliant base of berry notes to the Red and subtle tropical fruit notes to the White, while adding structure to the mouthfeel. Although most wine does not contain Brettanomyces or souring organisms, we added Lactobacillus and Pediococcus to help the perception of wine while also brightening the fruit flavors. Brettanomyces was added to give it depth and lend earthy notes reminiscent of a natural wine. Malbec grapes add their famous jam like berry flavors and rich tannins to the Red and Muscat grapes reinforce the tropical fruit flavors in the White. The oak barrels themselves bring everything together, adding light vanilla notes and more body. They are both bottle conditioned for optimal comparison of future vintages.